Black Tuesday

In time, it might come to be known as Black Tuesday, the day Cal did away with baseball, lacrosse, men’s and women’s gymnastics and demoted its revered rugby program to the murky category of “varsity club.”

Done in the name of financial sustainability and compliance with Title IX requirements, the moves leave 102 student-athletes in four sports in limbo and 61 in rugby wondering what the heck “varsity club” status means.

“It sounds like junior varsity status to me,” rugby coach Jack Clark said. “There’s going to be a significant downgrade for Cal rugby. There’s no other way to look at it. We’re being demoted out of Intercollegiate Athletics.”

Clark was understandably heated and emotional and passionate when I sat down with him in the rugby fieldhouse Wednesday. In fact, he was fairly breathing fire.

“We’re among the most high-performing sports in Intercollegiate Athletics,” he said. “You’re taking one of your most high-performing teams and demoting them down to where we have to pay to get (athletes’) ankles taped.”

For all he’s done for his alma mater and the proud rugby program (21 of its 25 national championships were won on Clark’s watch) Clark was handed his walking papers on Black Tuesday.

He was given an exit packet explaining his employment in the athletic department would come to an end at the end of the current school year, in June of 2011. Twenty-one national championships, a recognizable brand name, a healthy endowment and $300,000 in advertising revenue?

Great, go see Human Resources.

“I’ve woken up every day for 30 years trying to bring credit to this university,” said Clark, who was hired as head coach in 1984. “To hear my athletic director and my chancellor selling what they had done, it was so hurtful to hear.”

Clark pointed out that rugby is being demoted at Cal in the same year the seven-a-side version of the sport was added to the Olympic Games program, meaning it will also be played in the Pan American Games and World University Games.

As well, NBC is interested in Rugby Sevens, having bought the broadcast rights to an inagural tournament that was played in June in which Cal reached the title game and lost to Utah in the late going.

“The only thing we needed from the university was an opportunity to validate what we do,” Clark said. “It’s about validating these proud, capable men. What they’ve done is remove that validation. This is more important than love or money. This is everything. They’re taking it away for nothing.”

Clark said he proposed to Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and athletic director Sandy Barbour that women’s rugby at Cal, now a club sport, be elevated to varsity status and compete on the NCAA level. He said his rugby program would fund women’s rugby to help increase the numbers of female varsity athletes on campus and help balance the male-female numbers.

Instead, the most successful sports team in school history was sacrificed in the name of Title IX compliance, victim of a literal numbers game.